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‘That rather sinful city of London’: the coal miner, the city and the country in the British cultural imagination, c. 1969–2014

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 June 2019

Jörg Arnold
Jörg Arnold*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The article proceeds from the observation that in the contemporary British cultural imagination, the figure of the coal miner tends to be presented as the embodiment of anti-urban and organicist qualities that in continental Europe are more commonly associated with the peasantry. Drawing on the theoretical insights of Raymond Williams, the article traces the genealogy of this ‘structure of feeling’ back to the time of the miners’ strike of 1984/85 and further back in the 1970s. It argues that the ‘ruralized’ miner was one imaginary in a complex power struggle over the ‘real’ identity of miners that was waged between the industry and the state, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the National Coal Board (NCB), and, crucially, inside the NUM itself. ‘Ruralization’ was most vigorously promoted by union militants who sought to displace an alternative vision, championed jointly by the Coal Board and union moderates, which had situated miners firmly at the heart of industrial modernity. It was only in the wake of the defeat of the miners in the 1984/85 strike, and during the subsequent cultural reworking of this strike, that this structure finally gained dominance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 47 , Special Issue 2: The de-industrializing city in the UK and Germany: conceptual approaches and empirical findings in comparative perspective , May 2020 , pp. 292 - 310
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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Footnotes

†

I would like to thank Tobias Becker, Dean Blackburn, Roberta Cimino, Shane Ewen, Sonja Levsen and the anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

References

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35 Swansea University, South Wales Coalfield Collection, AUD/126: interview with Scargill, Arthur, no date [1979–82].

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37 J. Gormley, ‘Open letter to Lord Robens’, The Miner, Sep. 1970. See also ‘Time we got off our knees’, The Miner, Jun. 1970; ‘This time we mean business’, Coal News, Sep. 1970. For a brief sketch of Gormley's life and career, see P. Routledge, ‘Gormley, Joseph’, ODNB (online edition), accessed 19 Apr. 2018.

38 NUM, Annual Reports and Proceedings for the Year 1982 (London, no date [1983]), 337–47, at 337.

39 NCB, Get It All Together as a Skilled Miner!, produced by Colbear Advertising Ltd in conjunction with NCB Public Relations Department (London, no date [c. 1975]).

40 Douglass, D. and Krieger, J., A Miner's Life (London et al., 1983)Google Scholar. See also Douglass, D., ‘“Worms of the earth”: the miners’ own story’, in Samuel, R. (ed.), People's History and Socialist Theory (London, 1981), 61–7Google Scholar, at 61.

41 Douglass and Krieger, Miner's Life, 13.

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47 Coal Industry Social Welfare Organization (CISWO), Annual Reports and Accounts for 1977 (London [1978]), 12–16; CISWO, Annual Reports and Accounts for 1978 (London [1979]), 14–16; CISWO, Annual Reports and Accounts for 1979 (London [1980]), 14–16.

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54 Yorkshire Miner, Feb. 1982.

55 NUM, Annual Reports and Proceedings 1982, 364–76.

56 See the official letter by the NUM to six architectural firms stipulating the requirements of the new headquarters. NUM Archives, Barnsley, box New HQ: Architects, Design, Sculptors: L. Daly to architects, ‘NUM National Headquarters’, 27 Oct. 1982.

57 NUM, Annual Reports and Proceedings 1982, 365.

58 Ibid., 366.

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62 Ibid., 376.

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66 Letter to Lawrence Daly, 11 Oct. 1969, Modern Records Centre, L. Daly papers, MSS.302/3/5.

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68 Samuel, Bloomfield and Boanas (eds.), Enemy Within, 24.

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70 Margaret Thatcher Foundation, Press Conference in York, 26 Sep. 1984, www.margaretthatcher.org/document/105510, accessed 28 Jan. 2019.

71 A. Sherman, ‘How Scargill is betraying Marx’, Times, 21 Aug. 1984.

72 Massey, D. and Wainwright, H., ‘Beyond the coalfields: the work of the miners’ support groups’, in Beynon, H. (ed.), Digging Deeper: Issues in the Miners’ Strike (London, 1984), 149–67Google Scholar, here 151.

73 Figures according to D. Kelliher, ‘Solidarity, class and labour agency: mapping networks of support between London and the coalfields during the 1984–85 miners’ strike’, University of Glasgow Ph.D. thesis, 2017, 8.

74 Samuel, Bloomfield and Boanas (eds.), Enemy Within, 33.

75 Kelliher, ‘Solidarity, class and labour agency’; idem, ‘Constructing a culture of solidarity: London and the British coalfields in the long 1970s’, Antipode, 49/1 (2016), 106–24; idem and D. Featherstone (eds.), London and the 1984–5 Miners’ Strike (no date).

76 NUM National Headquarters, 27 Oct. 1982, in NUM Offices Barnsley, box New HQ, Architects, Design, Solicitors.

77 NUM, Annual Reports and Proceedings for the Year 1983 (London, [1984]), 118.

78 NUM, Annual Reports and Proceedings for the Year 1989 (London, [1990]), 204. See also NUM, Annual Reports and Proceedings for the Year 1987 (London, [1988]), 277. See also O. Hatherley, A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain (London and New York, 2010), 104–5.

79 NUM, Annual Reports and Proceedings for the Year 1984 (London, [1985]), AR 7.

80 A history of the ways in which the miners’ strike has been memorialized remains to be written, but see my paper on ‘The missing link – de-industrialisation, memory and the left behind’ (unpublished manuscript).